The Athabasca Oil Sands

The modern world of today runs on fossil fuels with crude oil being the live blood of industrialized countries. Though much of the twentieth century old was plentiful easily acquired and low in cost it has only been in the past thirty years that we have seen oil prices rise substantially. This can be attributed to many different reason. These price changes have challenged the industrialized world to become more creative with their techniques of both acquiring oil and using it.

In northern Alberta, Canada there lies the Athabasca oil sands this the worlds second largest reserve of oil. The oil oil sands are a mixture of sand clay water and sandstone that are loosely packed together with an an extremely dense form of petroleum called “bitumen” which is an extra heavy oil with very low viscosity. To gain access to this oil, steam or hot water is used to heat it up then it is trucked to an upgrader with separates the oil from the other components after it is separated it goes to a refinery which separates out waist from the synthetic light crude oil then this oil is piped to refineries in the united states where it is refined into our fuels. There are three main oil sand sight in Albert including, Athabasca, peace river and coldlake oil sands with the Athabasca oil sands being the bigest deposit

Crude oil has may different forms that are found in different parts of the world.1)very light Crude which is used to make gasoline, Jet fuel and Kerosine this oil is highly volatile and can evaporate in a matter of days.2) Light crude which is also used for gasoline and other fuels including diesel oil. These oils are not as volatile but care moderately toxic and evaporate less quickly.3)Medium oils, which accounts for most of the cru...

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... hiring more workers to drill wells operate machinery and build and maintain pipeline in both the United States and Canada.
Though there are many benefits to the oil sand there are also many negative affects that it also has. The National Petroleum council has just recently reconsigned the full potential of the north America natural gas and oil reserves and how they could power our countries for years to come. There are several down falls to the Oil sand on the environmental spectrum. One being the contamination of water sorces, in order to heat the bitumen water or steam is need. Water is generaly drawn out of nearby rivers or lakes and what is now recycled in the process (up to 90%) runs back in to the lakes streams or water tables carrying high levels of Vandium Nickle Mercury chromium Cadmium selenium copper manganese iron and zink and can posin the wild life nd